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Clan Hamilton Library
In our library, we feature books relevant to the Clan Hamilton. Topics include the history of the Clan Hamilton and Scotland and travel in Scotland. As a service to our readers, we have provided a link to our associate, Amazon.com, so that you can purchase these books (usually at a discount of 20% for paperback and 30% for hardcover books). Sometimes prices change--you will receive the current pricing after you click on the link.
If you wish to nominate a book for inclusion, please e-mail our librarian.
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Duke
Hamilton Is Dead: A Story of Aristocratic Life and Death in Stuart Britain by Victor Stater
List Price:
Hardcover - 288 pages
1 Ed edition (February 1999) |
Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews , December 15, 1998
In a vividly evocative account, Stater (History/Louisiana State Univ.)
weaves social and political history into a plot that reads like a Restoration-era
episode of Dallas. By the late 17th century the British nobility's reliance
on land-based wealth made them poorer than the new mercantile classes of
the emerging British Empire, which compelled many lords to incur ruinous
debts to maintain their grand lifestyles. Against this economic backdrop,
Stater draws a picture of ubiquitous immorality and violence, typified by
the nasty and brutish lives of two men: Charles, the fourth Baron Mohun
(1677-1712), and James, Duke of Hamilton (1658-1712). Though a prodigious
worker in matters of state, Mohun, who was eventually tried for murder twice
by the House of Lords, spent most of his life tippling, brawling, and whoring.
Hamilton, a Scottish peer who championed Scottish independence, landed twice
in the Tower of London for his connections to the Catholic Stuarts and played
a deceitful double game for years with the court of the exiled Catholic pretender
that amounted to treason. Stater focuses on one particularly fateful piece
of intrigue, the bitter decade-long legal battle between Mohun and Hamilton
over title to Gawsworth, a valuable English country estate, which had been
obtained by Mohun through a monstrous pattern of fraud and perjury, and which
Hamilton claimed through his marriage of convenience. The machinations of
a rapist and profligate, George MacCartney, whose appointment as governor
of Jamaica was blocked by Hamilton, exacerbated the tensions between the
two men. In 1712, the Gawsworth lawsuits and the two lords' deepening political
enmity mohun and fellow Whigs like the Duke of Marlborough feared that Hamilton's
suspected connections with the pretender could result in Catholic restoration
led to a mutually fatal encounter on Hyde Park's dueling ground. A vivid,
if often ugly, snapshot of a social class under siege in a time of tumultuous
change. Well researched and thoughtful. (b&w photos, not seen) --
Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Book Description
Politics and society in an aristocratic world--as seen in the dramatic
story of a notorious duel.
On the morning of November 15, 1712, two of Britain's most important peers, the fourth Baron Mohun and the fourth Duke of Hamilton, met in Hyde Park. In a flurry of brutal swordplay that lasted perhaps two minutes, both fell mortally wounded. For months afterward, the kingdom was in a uproar, for the duel had occurred at a moment of grave political crisis. Whigs and Tories, increasingly desperate over the future as Queen Anne neared death, hurled charges of political murder and treasonous plotting against one another. Charge and countercharge filled the press as the social and moral crises mounted.
Using the famous Mohun-Hamilton duel as a focal point, Victor Stater re-creates the desperate aristocratic world of late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century Britain. Mohun and Hamilton stood at opposite ends of a bitterly divided political spectrum, but politics was not the only cause of their quarrel. A decade-long battle over a disputed inheritance was a crucial element, and Stater shows how, amid the luxury and ostentation of the aristocratic lifestyle, something very like moral anarchy reigned. The result is a stunning narrative of life and death in a tumultuous time, an era in which incivility and moral turpitude ruled beneath a thin veneer of aristocratic manners.
About the Author
Victor Stater is associate professor of history at Louisiana State
University and the author of Noble Government.
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Michelin
Green Guide: Scotland (4th Edition)
List Price:
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This book is a "must" for travelers to Scotland! It provides a description and ranking of sites and sights in Scotland and is invaluable for planning a trip. You should also consider purchasing the Michelin Red Guide (for hotels and restaurants) and the detailed Michelin map of Scotland, both listed below.
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Michelin
Red Guide Hotels-Restaurants Great Britain & Ireland
List Price:
Library Binding 25th edition (April 1998) |
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Great
Britain Scotland Map: Michelin 401
List Price:
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| Clan Map Scotland Price: $11.95 (Sorry, no discount)
Hardcover (September 1998)
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